There are many contentious political issues, and they are contentious for lots of reasons. The big one in the news right now is abortion. Personally, I find the debate surrounding the abortion issue to be far more interesting than the issue itself. The debate reveals why the issue is so contentious. It's not simply the nature of the issue itself that is responsible, but the fact that the opposing sides view abortion as a completely different type of issue.
For people who favor legal abortion, abortion is a medical issue. To them, a fetus is not an especially young baby human, but something that is in some way less than that. Viewed from that position, it only makes sense to protect the rights of women to seek whatever medical treatments they deem appropriate, including having non-babies removed from their bodies. I suppose, at the root of it, this makes a fetus a parasite.
People who are against abortion do view a fetus as being an especially young baby human. To them, then, killing it would be a violent crime, and this whole thing doesn't even seem like it should be an issue, because killing baby humans once they're born is definitely illegal, and nobody seems to think we should change that. I suppose at the root of it, these people must believe that genetic lineage is the only definition of humanity, as fetuses lack any of the qualities (self-awareness, opinions, artistic creativity, personality) that make humans people and other kinds of animals non-people. I suppose that for those of us who believe in them, souls are also a meaningful separation between humans and other animals, but I can't claim to know whether fetuses have souls.
I've always thought it would be interesting to argue abortion from a self-defense perspective. After all, it is not always illegal to violently kill humans, even the ones that everybody agrees are people. When a stranger trespasses on a person's private property, and the person reasonably believes that the stranger is a threat to his or her life, the person is justified in killing the stranger by violent means. Abortion can be argued to satisfy all of these conditions. Childbirth is can be dangerous or deadly, and it's hard to think of property any more private than one's own body. Yet, you never hear this argument. I wonder why.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
How Do You Train Seven Billion Monkeys?
We are an incredibly diverse species, representing millions of different cultures, beliefs, and ways of life. At least, we are on the outside.
We are, excepting the edges of the bell-curve, a species that exhibits the same pattern of a few learned behaviors based on the same few beliefs that we don't know we espouse. And, of course, you don't believe me. How could a person believe something that he or she doesn't know she believes?
How could she?
What kind of television programs did you watch the most of when you were very young? How long were they? Who was in them? What were they about? Was the plot different in each episode?
I am asking seriously. Please answer these questions. Write the answers down, if that helps. Put it in the comments, if you want.
So, what is your answer? Actually, it doesn't matter what your answer was. Unless your answer was "my parents didn't let me watch TV," your answer is almost certainly wrong. Among the people who did watch TV in their preschool years, the programs they think they watched the most will vary, but the programs they actually watched the most are the same. People remember watching a lot of fifteen-minute animated shows depicting various, whacky antics of oddly-shaped people or anthropomorphic animals. They remember watching half-hour shows featuring both puppets and live actors. They probably watched those as well.
In between those fifteen-minute animated TV shows and thirty-minute puppet shows, almost all television stations air a different kind of show, though, and these are incredibly formulaic. All of them are fifteen or thirty seconds long. All of them feature actors whose names and faces you would not recognize today. The vast majority of them have a simple, three-part plot featuring an emotional journey and a McGuffin. In the first part of the plot, our characters are downcast, somewhere between miserable and just unbearably bored. In the second part of the plot, our characters are introduced to the McGuffin, which they find fascinating. They are consumed with interest in it, with desire for it. This is the turning point. In the third part of the plot, our characters possess the McGuffin, and they have been cured of their misery or boredom. It has been replaced with liveliness, happiness, excitment.
In case you haven't figured it out, I'm describing television advertisements targeting young children. They are incredibly simple and formulaic. That is not an accident. Advertising aimed at children isn't really salesmanship. It's training. As a society, we train our children to solve their imperfect lives by engaging in consumerism. We indoctrinate them with a belief that if they are not presently happy, finding something they want to buy and buying it can make them happy.
And does it work? Oh boy, howdy! Have you been to a shopping mall?
Heck, even if you don't consciously believe that consumerism will make you happy, you very likely behave as though you do. Almost everyone identifies items that they want, becomes excited about buying them, buys them, and then lives out the remainder of life in the same emotional equilibrium as before the purchase. I do it, and I'm the guy telling you how ridiculous it is! But then I look around me, and I can remember a time before I owned each of the five objects closest to me. I was no unhappier in that time. Try it. Were you?
Occasionally, a purchase really does improve a person's life. Purchases related to a passionately-held hobby can certainly be money well spent. However, even some of these are irrelevant to our emotional well-being. Avid sports fans often get excited about buying better television to watch sports on. For a while, this television will be new and remarkable. Soon, sports fans return to normal, and they will be exactly as happy or as unhappy as they would have been watching a game with the same results on the old TV. If the new TV breaks, and the old one happens to have been sitting in the garage, complaints about the relative quality of the old TV will disappear within a couple of weeks. It is being able to watch the desired games that makes a difference, not the television.
Worthwhile purchases are the ones that allow us to pursue our passions more often or more thoroughly. These are surprisingly few and far between, to the degree that there are almost none that are universal. A bed that allows us to rest well might be the only one. Purchases that increase convenience would seem good candidates in theory, but in practice, they tend to save too little time to make a difference, or to open up time that we fill with more dissatisfying obligations rather than hobbies. If you feel desperate to buy something you can barely afford, or make a purchase that is otherwise inconvenient, carefully consider the things you already own. Are any one of them, or the set as a whole, preventing you from pursuing your passions as thoroughly as you like? Take a while to think about it thoroughly before you decide on a final answer. If the answer is still yes, a purchase may be the way to go. If not, try to circumvent your training by focusing more on what you do, not what you have.
You might be surprised by the results.
We are, excepting the edges of the bell-curve, a species that exhibits the same pattern of a few learned behaviors based on the same few beliefs that we don't know we espouse. And, of course, you don't believe me. How could a person believe something that he or she doesn't know she believes?
How could she?
What kind of television programs did you watch the most of when you were very young? How long were they? Who was in them? What were they about? Was the plot different in each episode?
I am asking seriously. Please answer these questions. Write the answers down, if that helps. Put it in the comments, if you want.
So, what is your answer? Actually, it doesn't matter what your answer was. Unless your answer was "my parents didn't let me watch TV," your answer is almost certainly wrong. Among the people who did watch TV in their preschool years, the programs they think they watched the most will vary, but the programs they actually watched the most are the same. People remember watching a lot of fifteen-minute animated shows depicting various, whacky antics of oddly-shaped people or anthropomorphic animals. They remember watching half-hour shows featuring both puppets and live actors. They probably watched those as well.
In between those fifteen-minute animated TV shows and thirty-minute puppet shows, almost all television stations air a different kind of show, though, and these are incredibly formulaic. All of them are fifteen or thirty seconds long. All of them feature actors whose names and faces you would not recognize today. The vast majority of them have a simple, three-part plot featuring an emotional journey and a McGuffin. In the first part of the plot, our characters are downcast, somewhere between miserable and just unbearably bored. In the second part of the plot, our characters are introduced to the McGuffin, which they find fascinating. They are consumed with interest in it, with desire for it. This is the turning point. In the third part of the plot, our characters possess the McGuffin, and they have been cured of their misery or boredom. It has been replaced with liveliness, happiness, excitment.
In case you haven't figured it out, I'm describing television advertisements targeting young children. They are incredibly simple and formulaic. That is not an accident. Advertising aimed at children isn't really salesmanship. It's training. As a society, we train our children to solve their imperfect lives by engaging in consumerism. We indoctrinate them with a belief that if they are not presently happy, finding something they want to buy and buying it can make them happy.
And does it work? Oh boy, howdy! Have you been to a shopping mall?
Heck, even if you don't consciously believe that consumerism will make you happy, you very likely behave as though you do. Almost everyone identifies items that they want, becomes excited about buying them, buys them, and then lives out the remainder of life in the same emotional equilibrium as before the purchase. I do it, and I'm the guy telling you how ridiculous it is! But then I look around me, and I can remember a time before I owned each of the five objects closest to me. I was no unhappier in that time. Try it. Were you?
Occasionally, a purchase really does improve a person's life. Purchases related to a passionately-held hobby can certainly be money well spent. However, even some of these are irrelevant to our emotional well-being. Avid sports fans often get excited about buying better television to watch sports on. For a while, this television will be new and remarkable. Soon, sports fans return to normal, and they will be exactly as happy or as unhappy as they would have been watching a game with the same results on the old TV. If the new TV breaks, and the old one happens to have been sitting in the garage, complaints about the relative quality of the old TV will disappear within a couple of weeks. It is being able to watch the desired games that makes a difference, not the television.
Worthwhile purchases are the ones that allow us to pursue our passions more often or more thoroughly. These are surprisingly few and far between, to the degree that there are almost none that are universal. A bed that allows us to rest well might be the only one. Purchases that increase convenience would seem good candidates in theory, but in practice, they tend to save too little time to make a difference, or to open up time that we fill with more dissatisfying obligations rather than hobbies. If you feel desperate to buy something you can barely afford, or make a purchase that is otherwise inconvenient, carefully consider the things you already own. Are any one of them, or the set as a whole, preventing you from pursuing your passions as thoroughly as you like? Take a while to think about it thoroughly before you decide on a final answer. If the answer is still yes, a purchase may be the way to go. If not, try to circumvent your training by focusing more on what you do, not what you have.
You might be surprised by the results.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Racism: Complex
The recent fervor over the shootings in South Carolina has crystallized a thought that I've been working on for some time. I think people are talking about the wrong thing. The biggest problem in this country isn't the Second Amendment, nor is it the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee. It isn't the Republican Party, although they may well be the worst of two great evils, and their compulsion to talk nonsense about the motives of Dylann Roof has made them look really, really bad. The biggest problem in this country isn't even racism, but rather the way racism is viewed.
Think about this: if you believe you are superior to me because your parents were Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, that's a delusion. It's probably a symptom of mental illness. How come if I believe that I am superior to you because my parents were white people, that's an opinion? It's equally nonsensical, and its underpinnings are equally implausible, if not more so. Biologically, race does not exist--we can't say the same of Jesus and Joan with such scientific certainty. If one is the product of an unwell mind, mustn't the other be as well?
In addition to making little sense, treating racism as an opinion is also incredibly destructive. After all, an opinion is something that can be held without being favored by the preponderance of facts, because most of them can't be proven or disproven. I think grape jelly tastes wonderful, and my neighbor won't touch the stuff; my neighbor thinks red motorcycles look better than black ones and I paint all of mine black in defiance. In the end, we have to let it go because we can't prove our side. You may think that the government is capable of solving the biggest problems in our lives today, and I may think that's the biggest load of hogwash I've heard since Backstreet Boys music, but at the end, those are opinions, which means that we're left to respect them, or, at least, acknowledge that we're each entitled to them. Even if racism is viewed as outdated, so are 1960s Thunderbirds. For someone who believes that the past is superior to the present (a legitimately unprovable opinion), then outdatedness is a positive quality. At some level, we require ourselves to allow racism to persist because it falls into a category of ideas that can't be wrong all the way--even though one of its major logical underpinnings is categorically wrong, disproving the idea at its very foundation.
Not only that, but treating racism as an opinion may very well drive people with racism to want racism to persist. In today's world, it has become increasingly taboo to hate, but opinions are the one thing we are still allowed to hate people for. People can group others by beliefs and attack them without consequence. "Democrat," "liberal," and "progressive" are pejoritives in some places, "Red" and "Nazi" as intense as "racist" in most. That may sound like a good thing as applied to racism, and to read it written by someone like me, who has hated racism and racists most of his life, it definitely comes off as hypocritical to suggest otherwise, but in practical terms, there are few ideas worse than that of responding to racism with hate. You can't use hate to change people. Even if you do manage to change them, it won't be in the way you were hoping. I'm now into my fourth decade of being hated because I'm weird, and yet after absorbing so much of that hatred, and spilling the rest back out onto whoever was available, I am not at all less weird. I have more weird ideas than ever, but now with a side of misanthropy. If one anecdote does not suffice, consider this: despite some people using "Democrat" as an insult, they are more or less as popular as their rivals. Consider the centuries of hatred that have utterly failed to make black people look any different. Hate may feel pretty good, (okay, fine, you got me...it does feel effing awesome) but it just doesn't work.
What can work, if done intelligently, is to change people with compassion. The fields of religion and psychology have developed numerous experts in this pursuit. The way to end racism is to find the people who have racism and treat them. Do so with kindness, with respect, with professionalism, so they will keep coming back. They need the treatment. Nobody needs the hatred.
That's kind of awesome, if you think about it. How many illnesses can be cured entirely by education?
Think about this: if you believe you are superior to me because your parents were Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, that's a delusion. It's probably a symptom of mental illness. How come if I believe that I am superior to you because my parents were white people, that's an opinion? It's equally nonsensical, and its underpinnings are equally implausible, if not more so. Biologically, race does not exist--we can't say the same of Jesus and Joan with such scientific certainty. If one is the product of an unwell mind, mustn't the other be as well?
In addition to making little sense, treating racism as an opinion is also incredibly destructive. After all, an opinion is something that can be held without being favored by the preponderance of facts, because most of them can't be proven or disproven. I think grape jelly tastes wonderful, and my neighbor won't touch the stuff; my neighbor thinks red motorcycles look better than black ones and I paint all of mine black in defiance. In the end, we have to let it go because we can't prove our side. You may think that the government is capable of solving the biggest problems in our lives today, and I may think that's the biggest load of hogwash I've heard since Backstreet Boys music, but at the end, those are opinions, which means that we're left to respect them, or, at least, acknowledge that we're each entitled to them. Even if racism is viewed as outdated, so are 1960s Thunderbirds. For someone who believes that the past is superior to the present (a legitimately unprovable opinion), then outdatedness is a positive quality. At some level, we require ourselves to allow racism to persist because it falls into a category of ideas that can't be wrong all the way--even though one of its major logical underpinnings is categorically wrong, disproving the idea at its very foundation.
Not only that, but treating racism as an opinion may very well drive people with racism to want racism to persist. In today's world, it has become increasingly taboo to hate, but opinions are the one thing we are still allowed to hate people for. People can group others by beliefs and attack them without consequence. "Democrat," "liberal," and "progressive" are pejoritives in some places, "Red" and "Nazi" as intense as "racist" in most. That may sound like a good thing as applied to racism, and to read it written by someone like me, who has hated racism and racists most of his life, it definitely comes off as hypocritical to suggest otherwise, but in practical terms, there are few ideas worse than that of responding to racism with hate. You can't use hate to change people. Even if you do manage to change them, it won't be in the way you were hoping. I'm now into my fourth decade of being hated because I'm weird, and yet after absorbing so much of that hatred, and spilling the rest back out onto whoever was available, I am not at all less weird. I have more weird ideas than ever, but now with a side of misanthropy. If one anecdote does not suffice, consider this: despite some people using "Democrat" as an insult, they are more or less as popular as their rivals. Consider the centuries of hatred that have utterly failed to make black people look any different. Hate may feel pretty good, (okay, fine, you got me...it does feel effing awesome) but it just doesn't work.
What can work, if done intelligently, is to change people with compassion. The fields of religion and psychology have developed numerous experts in this pursuit. The way to end racism is to find the people who have racism and treat them. Do so with kindness, with respect, with professionalism, so they will keep coming back. They need the treatment. Nobody needs the hatred.
That's kind of awesome, if you think about it. How many illnesses can be cured entirely by education?
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